The present invention relates to telephone enclosures, and more particularly to a telephone enclosure which provides wheelchair access for the handicapped while maintaining efficiency of space.
Enclosures containing public telephones, commonly referred to as telephone booths, have long been available in public places and in business establishments for use by patrons of these establishments and by the general public. The booths are often outside in prominent locations. In general, the telephone booths are provided by the business. However, the booth usually bears only the logo of the telephone company providing the telephone service. As a result, the telephone user does not associate the telephone booth and the service it provides with the business. The appearance of two separate business on the premises, the telephone company and the business owner's, tend to detract from the business premises. Hence, it would be advantageous to provide a telephone booth that appears to be an integral part of the business establishment.
Unfortunately, the market for telephone booths for any given business establishment or chain of establishments is too small to allow custom booths to be manufactured for each business. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a telephone booth which could be economically customized to reflect a particular business establishment.
Efficient use of space is of primary importance both in public places and in business establishments. Hence, the emphasis in telephone booth design has traditionally been the fulfillment of the specified function while encompassing a minimum amount of floor space. Typical telephone booth installations consist of a number of telephones, housed side by side in small booths or lesser enclosures. The number of telephones is selected to accommodate the anticipated peak load. At other times, most of the telephones are unused. Hence, it would be advantageous to provide a telephone booth which serves other functions when it is not in use. In this regard, the use of the booth as a vehicle for advertising the products of the business establishment would be particularly useful.
Prior art telephone enclosures are also deficient in that they are not accessible to handicapped persons confined to wheelchairs. These prior art telephone booths normally have accordion doors which, when completely open, provide an access port that is only 30" wide. This is insufficient for a wheelchair to enter. To make matters even worse, these accordion doors normally slide in a slotted track mounted at the top and at the foot of the door opening, making it difficult or impossible for a wheelchair to pass over the door sill.
Even if a wheelchair could pass through the door, the telephones are normally placed too high to allow a handicapped person seated in a wheelchair to reach the coin slots or to dial the phone. Furthermore, telephone booths usually have a rack of telephone directories mounted beneath the counter below the telephone. A wheelchair occupant is typically obstructed by the placement of this rack from moving the wheelchair close enough to the telephone to gain access to the phone.
One prior art solution to the problem of handicapped access has been to construct special telephone booths. The booths in question are wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs and have telephone instruments which are lower to the ground. Unfortunately, these booths require significantly more floor space per telephone. As pointed out above, floor space is at a premium in most establishments.
Broadly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved telephone enclosure.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a telephone booth that can be mass-produced and then be customized to provide an appearance that associates it with a given business enterprise.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a telephone booth that may be used for advertising the products of the business establishment in which it is placed.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a telephone enclosure which permits access to persons confined to wheelchairs.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a wheelchair-accessible telephone enclosure which maintains efficient utilization of floor space.
These and other objects of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description of the invention and the accompanying drawings.